


Three Small Bits of Wood and 4 cc of Mouse Blood

by Zoya1416



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, Magical force fields, Making do with less, Rite of AskhEnte, Sir Terry Pratchett, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:13:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8583196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: Although I would never in a thousand years admit it, sometimes I take ideas about magic from literature. Well, I say literature, but it's actually my old friend Sir Pterry who first got me onto this.





	

Although I would never in a thousand years admit it, sometimes I take ideas about magic from literature. Well, I say literature, but it's actually my old friend Sir Pterry who first got me onto this. I'd been pondering for a long time how to bring a coaxial cable into the Folly proper, so as to have the benefits of the 21st century available to us. Nightingale stressed that the last time the force fields, sorry, magical defenses, had been updated in the Folly was before World War II when you could have fifty wizards chanting together. So, not possible with only the two of us.

But as I say, pondering the available literature, I came across the Rite of AshkEnte, used to summon Death.

“The Rite has evolved over the years. It used to be thought that eight wizards were required, each at his station on the point of a great ceremonial octogram, swaying and chanting, arms held out sideways so that their fingertips just touched: there was also a requirement for dribbly candles,thuribles, green smoke and all the other tedious paraphernalia of traditional High magic. In fact, it can be performed by a couple of people with three small bits of wood and 4 cc of mouse blood; it can even be performed with two bits of wood and a fresh egg.”

We didn't have fifty wizards available anymore, or even eight, but the shortened Rite—it caught my attention.

Five weeks later I'd studied all the literature in the magic library about the magical defenses, especially the side comments. “Terence spec. that we could use ash and rowan.” “Two staves instead of one?” and most interesting to me, “partial warding?” and “electricity?”

The references to ash and rowan didn't seem particularly helpful, associated as they were with traditional folk magic, but the others—I started drawing diagrams. The most important thing, I thought, was to convince Nightingale into upgrading the defenses bit by bit.

I pitched it to him when we were full of a good dinner from Molly (no offal, thank you!) and an outstanding linzertorte, figuring that even Nightingale might be more mellow on a sugar rush. We were in the small parlor, adjacent to the smoking room, with the red flocked wallpaper, where port might have been drunk in olden times.

He frowned, but didn't reject me outright. Good sign.  


“It's another shortcut which will lead you into altering of the formae before you have mastery of one.”

I was ready for him.

“Isn't the most important part of the Folly defenses right at the front door? That's the weakest point, because we go in and out of it constantly, and an unethical practitioner could be waiting for us just outside.”

This had been worrying me since I realized what Nightingale was protecting behind the battle-steel doors in a dusty corridor. Much as I hated the thought, I wondered whether a bulldozer or backhoe might break through the walls. I didn't want to worry about that first, though, because I did think that anyone might pick an easier entrance, e.g. the front door. Once that was secured, I thought we might work our way around the building.

“I've been reading about spells using two practitioners together, holding staves, to draw greater circles of influence than just one.” I was dying to show him the diagrams I'd found on the computer, but I figured the old drawings on ink and paper would impress him more.

He looked thoughtful, and I pushed the idea a bit more.

“Also, I think it might be helpful to produce a—” I didn't want to call it an airlock, because I wasn't sure he knew the term, but that's really what I wanted. Some kind of cage to snap over undesirables while the good guys rushed inside. “A—maybe like a portcullis. Or something working sideways instead of falling down.”

“Are you also going to suggest we build a moat? I would think that would interfere with the architectural beauty. Probably not allowed by the committees on conversion.” He looked down his nose at me with the poshest of smiles.

Glaring at him, I pulled out my drawings. Dammit, if he was going to act like that—“I think an airlock might help. Set it forward of the magical defenses, and we can run inside, activate the mechanical defenses, just a touch or step here, and then we'll have a double line of protection. See, like this.” I had sweated blood planning an airlock which wouldn't weaken the entrance to the Folly or mar the appearance. It did involve strengthening the first step, and widening it inside, to create a meter-deep steel entrance with an automatic closure. I had organized the wooden frame to include fire-hardened wood to be set inside the usual frame. With this, we could produce an arch which matched the original, then sliding pocket doors of an inch of steel. We were lucky there. The Folly itself had been built with deeper walls than its neighbors, I presume to allow some type of additional protection against storming by screaming Russell Square insurgents.

Four weeks later (the SAU did have the authority of the Met in rushing its orders) Nightingale and I stood inside the new entrance, which still smelled of fresh paint. The airlock pocket doors had already been installed, and slid on their rails easily. A meter behind them at new traditionally-built doors, we stood ready to reproduce the front defenses. The master plan, if this worked, was to go around the Folly room by room, renewing the spell barriers as we went. 

We were on stepladders, mine a meter high, his slightly taller. I touched my first staff to the floor, and stretched my arm with the second staff as high over my head as I could. Nightingale would still have to reach a higher arch. We had previously laid in magic along in the four and a half meter wood and steel frame, preparing it to receive the sealing spells. 

Nightingale and I had reviewed the formae which had been used before, and we had had multiple practice sessions touching the staves together, and my staff and his cane. I thought we could do it. If Thomas “Tiger Tank” Nightingale could punch through the battle steel of a tank, he could draw an arch, I thought.

Drawing a breath, I murmured a new forma. My staff began to glow a soft violet color, and light spread along the bottom of the door frame. Nightingale reached down to touch it with his cane, drawing a purple line from it along the floor, then overhead as far as he could reach. I touched my staff to the edge of the frame, and then up along my side of it. Then we both cast far above us. We reached each other's magic at the keystone. It was more sensory than I had thought, tangling ourselves together to center the steel, hardened wood frame, and masonry, and bind it. I closed my eyes and let the magic pour through me.

When I opened my eyes, Nightingale was standing below me, looking at me in a concerned way. “Are you—”

He was going to ask if I was alright, but I wouldn't be having that. This wasn't about us.

I said as firmly as I could, “I'm fine, sir. How is the arch holding?”

We looked overhead. An outsider would see nothing, but this new creation had both our signare, strengthening the magical defenses it replaced.

I smiled. The best thing about this whole operation was that it showed how we could work together, an arch or room at a time, making the Folly even more ready to defend itself. I was already working on the tunnel of shaped spells which would eventually surround and seal a coaxial cable, four cc of mouse blood at a time.


End file.
